Beauty through Suffering
by Bowl of Lemons
Summary: The Grimm brother's Snow White leaves something to be desired of Snow White's prince's personality. Beauty through Suffering provides an alternate ending to this classical tale and creative insight on a largely overlooked character featured within.


I've always been obsessed with the dead. I mean, how couldn't I be? New life literally sprouts from the decaying flesh of the deceased. Rotting flesh supports thousands of bacteria and oh, oh don't get me going when the maggots begin to thrive. It's glorious.

But some people think of me as weird.

I don't blame them, no, for having such limited views of the wonderful— the fascinating. Not everyone can have such eyes as I—eyes that see what one should _really_ call beautiful. But I suppose I wasn't always like this.

It all began when my mother died. I was eight. She and father hadn't been getting along for a while, and when they were fighting, as they always did, I sat outside and listened to the cacophony of slaps and shouts they hurled at each other. But one day, as I listened to things heat up as they inevitably did, instead of shouts, I heard a bang. A big, crackling, angry, earsplitting bang. It rattled my prepubescent body as nothing else did. And when father came rushing out, veins popping, eyes wild, I'd known he'd killed her.

It was about a week before I saw the bullet hole. My father dragged me to her, kicking and screaming, and held my eyes open over her decaying body. I still don't know why he did it.

Maybe it was to harden me? I don't know how he was so sure that I wouldn't turn him in. But I guess he was a king after all; the police couldn't do much, in the end.

He didn't have to hold me for too long. I became fascinated; the maggots crawling through the small wound were big and plump and seemed to thrive on her greying flesh. And yet something else was picking at her eyes. Dark red beetles surfaced from behind her blue lips. And then, after this encounter, I knew she wasn't really dead. Just passed on, providing for the next life.

And so, I became obsessed.

It seemed, during that period, many women tried to court me. I'd no clue what to think. But in retrospect, it may have been because of my money; many women dream to marry a rich prince. I married many of them. And, as I'm sure they would have been happy about, made them more beautiful— more unique. They all died in various ways: stabbings, suffocation, asphyxiation. And, after they'd heard of my previous acts, the occasional suicide. It was all lovely. Stunning. They'd all become the mothers of life. Recently, though, there came to my attention a beautiful woman. I'd been riding through the woods and around the mines and heard the deep throated chatter of seven little dwarfs. They spoke of a young woman, and I had to see her. I followed them home. She was perfect: skin as white as snow, blood red lips, and hair as black as a raven's feathers. She reminds me of a young version of my mother and oh, _oh _how I wished I could bring a hatchet down upon her pretty white neck. But I didn't. No, not that time. I wanted to incubate her. To nurture her until she swelled and plumped and reddened and when she was right in that sweet spot, I'd shoot her. And I'd let her rot right in the open. I'd make her a recreation of my beginning. Of the day when I started to see just _what_ beauty was.

Word had come to me that the beautiful lady White had died. My feelings were mixed. On the one hand, I'd never seen a body that'd died of natural causes before, and her body would be _ravishing_, and on the other, I felt as if my muse had just broken down into sand and slipped through my fingers. Either way, I needed to have her. She must join my priceless collection. I went to see her with a handful of servants the next morning.

Despicable. DESPICABLE. What were they doing? They were _defiling_ her. They wouldn't let her blood rot. How could they? Dwarfs. I should have known that they'd have no taste. My blood boiled, and I wished I could take her away as soon as possible. I planned my moves. How could I expose her snowy flesh to the air? How could I make sure that bacteria would eat her from the inside out? At the time, I knew only how to lie and barter, and so that's what I did.

"May I sleep here tonight? Ah! ". I pretended to espy the glass case and mock rubbed my chin as if in contemplation.

"Let me have the coffin. I will give you whatever you want for it".

They balked. They refused and shied away from the idea of selling the girl.

I sighed, "Make me a present of it then. For I can't live without seeing Snow White. I will honor and cherish her as if she were my beloved". It wasn't exactly a lie, but I knew that their definition of 'honor and cherish' was completely different from my own. Nevertheless, the words felt like sickly sweet syrup pouring from my mouth.

They took pity and let me have her. My servants grabbed the casket and held it supine in their arms. But alas, the _fools, _they dropped it. She went crashing to the ground, and as I went to examine the damage, she opened her mouth and began to speak.

Needless to say, I was overjoyed. Back to plan 'A'. But if I wanted to carry out my original plan, I'd have to be careful not to scare her away.

So, I began, "You are with me," and I was once more suffocating on figurative syrup, "I love you more than anything else on earth. Come with me to my father's castle. You shall be my bride."

I still, to this day, don't know why I did what I did. Looking into eyes as piercing as my mother's must have caused me to mentally revert back to the mind of a child, and I confided to her what I was planning on doing with her life.

She didn't run.

She didn't hide.

She didn't pick up a hatchet and try to end it once and for all.

Instead, she smiled, and laughed, and crinkled her eyes up in a curious mischief.

"Okay," she said, "but first, help me with something. I want to make my step-mother dance".

And so I helped; I made that woman dance happily to her death in wrought iron slippers. And I fell in love with the gorgeous homicidal woman sitting next to me, on the queen's throne, happily smiling at the death before her eyes.

First mistake, I suppose. Rule number one: 'never fall in love with your captors'. And it was rule number one, I learned, that was the most fatal when ignored. Because now, it's me lying motionless on the ground bleeding from a bullet wound to the chest.

Is it stupid to admit that I'm proud of her in my last breaths?


End file.
